


Father Knows Best

by Pookaseraph



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Coming Out, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Miscommunication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-27
Updated: 2012-11-27
Packaged: 2017-11-19 15:48:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/574959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pookaseraph/pseuds/Pookaseraph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sheriff Stilinski has finally figured out the cause of the rift between them: his son's gay, and he's effectively cut that line of communication. Being the good father that he is, he tries to make sure Stiles knows that he can tell him <i>anything</i>, especially about Derek Hale. Their wires seem to have gotten crossed somewhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Father Knows Best

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Regann as always. And E, who always gives me the best titles without even thinking.
> 
> Spoilers through the end of season 2

Sheriff John Stilinski liked to think he was a good father, hell, he knew he was, but he also knew he occasionally fell down on the job. Being the Sheriff of all of Beacon County and the single father of a rambunctious sixteen year old boy took a lot out of a guy, and he really did do his best. That didn't mean he wasn't slowly becoming very aware of an area where he might have failed Stiles horribly. Their relationship had slowly become more and more strained since the end of the winter holidays, the lies were piling up, and more and more often Stiles was places he shouldn't be, doing things he shouldn't be doing, with an excuse so paper thin it was almost embarrassing.

It had taken him a few tries to figure out what might have been the root cause of the rift, and once he'd realized what it was, he felt pretty damn bad about it; it was easy to see he'd firmly closed that line of communication and now, in retrospect, it was only too easy to see why Stiles felt he couldn't tell John the truth. When Stiles had made what John had _thought_ was a transparent attempt at deflection by coming out to him in front of The Jungle, John had shut him down, cold.

He didn't mind the idea of his son being gay, and _had_ he minded, he was fairly certain Gen would have come back from the grave _just_ to give him a piece of her mind about it. It had just been so obvious at the time that Stiles was there - with Scott, as usual - and up to no good; when the coming out attempt wasn't repeated any time after, John had figured it was what he'd thought it was: a deflection, and nothing more.

 _Now_ , however, Stiles was running into Ristorante Maria to pick up their take away order, and had gotten waylaid by someone who John had, at first, thought was a particularly leggy blonde in a particularly short skirt and particularly high heels. Never mind the fact that John didn't think Stiles would have been quite certain what to _do_ with a leggy blonde, but it soon became apparent that it wasn't just her asking for directions, but having an actual conversation, Stiles's hands flying everywhere as he talked. Stiles actually had several minutes back and forth with her, before the host tapped on the glass and Stiles reluctantly waved goodbye to his friend and picked up their food, returning to the car and climbing into the passenger side.

"So, who's your friend?" John couldn't quite help himself from asking. John knew most of Stiles's friends, intentionally so, and he was fairly certain his son would have mentioned the addition of a leggy blonde to his roster, and he certainly wouldn't have had a full-on conversation with her, where John could see, if he intended to keep her a secret.

"Who? Jim?" Stiles asked, shoving a garlic knot in his mouth before licking his fingers. "Or, I guess technically Veronica at the moment. He was working the... um... shoes? I bet they're a designer label or something."

"He?" John asked, not quite able to keep the choked off question from coming out like it had.

"Yeah," Stiles continued. "He's a drag queen, not trans. Definitely a bit confusing at first?" Stiles continued to yammer, apparently completely mistaking John's question on the subject for something else entirely. "But he finally broke up with Mike. Dick. Good for him, though. He could totally do better."

"Uh huh."

Which Stiles, with his usual gusto, took for an encouragement, and he was off to the races discussing Jim's love life, and the _other_ drag queens he knew, and Lydia's party, where Stiles had apparently invited said drag queens when the party wasn't 'happening' enough. And he knew Stiles tended to learn everything about... pretty much everything he set his mind to, but he was fairly certain that Stiles hadn't gotten that comprehensive a personal history out of a half-dozen drag queens in an evening at a club, which meant his son was...

Well, John could draw a line from A to B well enough. His son had been spending time with drag queens asking about their love lives and cross dressing and trans issues, and that was certainly something that John hadn't really expected his son to take an interest in. It was somewhere around the fourth recitation of something about skincare and wearing heels that John realized he might have been a bit premature in assuming his son was completely straight.

In his own defense, he'd had a lot on his mind lately.

After the seed had been planted, it seemed impossible for it to not grow in John's mind. Stiles's unusual little obsession with Derek Hale and then Jackson Whitmore took on a decidedly odder bent. John still remembered the fact that his son had - at the tender age of seven - attempted to call dispatch on a girl who had tugged his - metaphorical - pigtails. That had led to a very serious conversation about the abuse of the resources of the Sheriff's Department, but maybe the lesson hadn't _stuck_.

John tried after that, he really did, especially after summer had come and Stiles had seemed a bit more relaxed than he had a month or two ago. He'd even thought about bringing it up outright after Stiles had gotten beaten up after the lacrosse finals. He could have asked if Stiles hadn't gotten beaten because of his winning score, but because the other team thought he was gay, but John couldn't bring himself to ruin the moment.

No, where John finally drew the line was when he pulled up at the house and watched, with shock, as Derek Hale, or someone who looked an awful lot like him - and not at all like Scott - exited his son's bedroom window, scrambled across the roof, jumped down and over the hedges and ran into the night. It could have been a burglar, of course, were it not for the fact that his son then, conspicuously, poked his head out of the window, looked both ways, and pulled the window closed.

That, John decided, was enough.

He found Stiles about ten minutes later, looking frantic and buzzed and more than a little flushed as he thumbed through a half-dozen books and the internet about God knew what.

"Stiles?"

"Mm?" Stiles didn't even look up.

"You know you can tell me anything, right?" He asked, voice a bit softer and more concerned than Stiles might have been used to.

Stiles closed his book, something about _herbs_ , and looked over at John, eyes narrowing for a moment, but then he nodded. "Yeah, I know."

"But you, _we_ haven't been sharing as much lately. It's not like us." John came all the way into the room then, and sat on the corner of the bed. "If there's _any_ reason I've given you to think I wouldn't be completely supportive of you, I'm sorry. You know I can't exactly support you committing felonies, but I like to think I'd be able to understand if something was going on with you."

His son made The Face, the one that Stiles had made since he was just a little boy, the one that told John that he did have a secret and it was bouncing around in Stiles's hyperactive little mind, just aching to get out. Stiles sighed. "Yeah. Yeah, I know. It's just... sometimes you've sort of got to figure it out for yourself, you know?"

"I know."

"And I guess most people... a lot of people would think it's..." Stiles looked down, playing with his hands.

And John suddenly felt the need to put his son out of his misery. "I've suspected for some time."

Stiles's head shot up. "Wait, really? Because it's not like most people's minds go to--" Stiles trailed off again.

"It's Derek Hale, right?" John asked, because Stiles had been _obsessed_ with him for some time. "You say you barely know him, and then all of a sudden you know him a little better, and all the places you've been hanging out, the new people you're spending time with, that... attack on you after the finales that I know you've never been quite honest with me about."

"Yeah." Stiles raked his fingers through his hair, nervous. "Yeah, I mean I know he looks... a bit like a serial killer, but he's not like that all the time. I didn't really trust him at first, because, hello, but there's all this stuff in his past, and it's sort of a miracle he _isn't_ a serial killer... I mean... um... oh crap. I'm not going to say he's _nice_ , but he's... Derek. His heart's always in the right place even if it's hard to see sometimes."

As far as impromptu declarations of why John shouldn't kill Stiles's secret boyfriend, John could imagine better, but this was his son he was talking about, so really he shouldn't have expected much more than that. "Has he ever hurt you, Stiles?"

"What? No! He's... I said he's totally not like that. That's like... a bad stereotype or something, I mean, yeah he gets a little physical and a little growly sometimes." More than John _ever_ needed to know about his son's sex life, but that was Stiles for you, always an over-sharer. "But he wouldn't... _you know_ without the other person's permission, and again, I admit that's not what you'd think just looking at him but he's a pretty decent guy under all of it."

"And are you being safe?" John wasn't a snoop, which might come as a surprise to most parents given that he was the Sheriff, but he and his son had always had an open relationship before this... distance came between them just recently.

"As safe as humanly possible," Stiles assured him. On most kids, that would have been a hedge, but Stiles... he meant it. "So you're... cool with it?"

Cool with his son apparently taking up with a twenty two year old accused felon? Not so much. He really would have preferred his son to take up with someone a bit closer to his own age, although if he'd been pressed to make a decision between Derek Hale and Jackson Whitmore, he probably would have chosen Derek Hale, although neither would have been his first choice. Still, he knew they lived in a pretty small town, and there were worse people to take up with than someone who wasn't pushing his son into something he didn't want and was being safe. He'd said he would be fine with anything, and it wasn't even the looming threat of his dead wife haunting him that made him give Stiles a big smile and answer: "Yes. I'm cool with it."

"Oh, good." Stiles collapsed into his chair. "Because let me tell you, the lies, not exactly the relationship I like us to be having, dad."

"Me neither." But that did leave one thing: the fact that outside of orchestrating a _manhunt_ for him John really didn't know much of anything about the man who was dating his son. "You're inviting Derek over for dinner."

"What?!"

"I want to get a feel for him myself, Stiles." John fixed Stiles with a very steady look. He wasn't backing down on this. "If you want me to trust him, you're both going to have to give a little. I can accept that you didn't think you could tell me before now, but I'm not letting you get away with me not getting to know him. The last _I_ knew, he was a person of interest, and then wanted for murder. You could see how a father might be concerned."

"Yeah... yeah... I guess that's fair." Stiles sighed, defeated. "I'll set it up."

"Soon, Stiles."

And John put it mostly out of his mind after that. He wasn't going to let Stiles weasel out of the dinner, and he certainly wasn't going to let _Derek_ weasel out of the dinner, but it was hard not to take a second glance at that damn Camaro whenever it drove by him, and he once ran into Derek at the grocery store when he'd been picking up some coleslaw on the way home and Derek was clinging to a box of Hamburger Helper like it was a shield.

"Derek."

"... Sheriff." Derek's eyes flicked from John's face, down to his gun, and then back up again.

"I'm not going to shoot you, if that's what you're worried about." And Derek did seem to relax, just slightly. "I am going to threaten you a little bit."

Before John could launch into his own threats, however, Derek cut him off. "I understand why you're not necessary thrilled, uh, Sheriff." Derek stumbled over the title, perhaps reminding himself that he was talking to the Sheriff, and not just the father of the boy he was dating. "The world's not a great place, it's dangerous, and Stiles is... out there now, but I want you to know I would do _anything_ to keep Stiles from getting hurt, anything."

John hadn't expected that level of... strength of conviction. To be honest he'd still been toying with the idea that Stiles was just notch on the bedpost for Derek, but the raw sincerity in his voice surprised John. "Alright... well... when can we expect you at dinner?"

"I still have to come to dinner?"

"Yes, Derek, you have to come for dinner."

"Tuesday?" Derek answered. "That's after..." Derek sort of waved his hand as though John was supposed to know what that was 'after', which he didn't, which irritated him. "Just it would probably be good to do it after Sunday. Stiles said you had the day shift Tuesday."

"Tuesday will be fine."

Derek nodded, and then backed away a step. "Should I... bring something? Beer?" He winced a moment later.

John couldn't blame him, the conspicuous reminder that Derek was, in fact, old enough to buy beer and his son was a month or so from _seventeen_ probably wasn't the way to make a good impression. "Just yourself. Seven o'clock."

Derek was, at the very least, punctual. John heard the Camaro before he saw the lights, and Derek knocked on the door at exactly six fifty-four. The knock on the door was much preferred to the _sneaking in the window_ that John had caught a second time since Stiles had told him the truth about him and Derek. "Sheriff."

"Derek." John held out his hand and they shook. "I think we could try out 'John', if that's alright with you?"

Derek then offered John one of the most uncomfortable smiles he had ever been witness to, and Stiles was his son, so that was saying something.

Dinner was, in a word, awkward. John watched as Derek and Stiles tried to engage in some sort of silent eyebrow communication, an entire table between them, but whatever Stiles was trying to get Derek to say, he wasn't saying, and whatever Derek was trying to get Stiles to say, he wasn't saying, so after stilted conversation about the weather - where apparently Stiles felt the need to comment on _Sunday's_ weather of all things, and talk about how nice the full moon had been - John decided to just, go for the throat, so to speak. Nothing was going to get talked about otherwise.

"So, Derek."

Derek turned towards John and took a deep breath, probably sensing what was coming.

"I never really got a straight answer from Stiles."

"There's a surprise."

John couldn't help the curl of his lip at that, but he wasn't going to let himself be dissuaded from his path by the mere fact that Derek seemed to know Stiles fairly well. "How long have you been dating my son?"

"What?" Derek blinked, and then tilted his head to the side.

His second 'what' was overlapped with Stiles's own squeaky 'what', and then Derek turned to Stiles with a very hard look. 

"Why does your dad think we're dating?"

Stiles looked between Derek and his dad. "I have no idea!" Something seemed to click in Stiles's mind a moment later and he turned to Derek. "If he thinks I'm gay and dating you... that means he doesn't know about..." And Stiles clapped his hands over his mouth and turned to Derek, wide eyed, and then back to John, and John was fairly certain he'd never been more confused in his entire life. "Alright..." Stiles squeaked and cleared his throat. "Dad, while I appreciate the fact that you think I am in any way attractive enough to land a piece of that, Derek and I aren't dating."

"So you're not gay?" John asked.

"That is not the topic under discussion!" Stiles shot back. "Alright, okay, not the end of the world. Dad, just... you know... relax."

"So there's a better reason for why my son is sneaking out of the house at all hours, Derek is sneaking into the house at all hours, and you're friends with drag queens?" John asked, because if so he _really_ needed to hear this.

"You made friends with drag queens at The Jungle?" Derek asked, smirking.

"Shut up, they're very nice. Just because you were too busy being a weirdo while you were there doesn't mean some of us can't make friends." Stiles took a deep breath and turned back to John. "Alright... Dad, are you calm?"

"Not really."

"And yet somehow I don't think we are getting out of this one." Stiles and John noticed Derek making motions like he was leaving, and Stiles pointed right at Derek. "Don't you think of going anywhere! Sit your furry ass down!"

John arched an eyebrow at both of them, because there was no way that was able to be taken that didn't suggest... He winced, but Derek didn't protest, just sat back down and looked abashed.

"So, I was originally going to have this conversation with _Scott_ here, but you'll have to do in a pinch." Stiles sat back down, and then hid his nerves behind a gulp of water and took a deep breath. "Dad, I'm sure you know Derek Hale as... that guy I accused of murder."

"Twice," Derek and John said, both at the same time.

"In my defense," Stiles said. "I thought you were dead the second time, and that was more Scott said and me backing him up, but I totally take responsibility for the first one. Although, as a note, it's always weird to bury half of your dead sister next to your house, guhhh."

So it turned out that Stiles knew Derek _very_ well, which still wasn't making John feel any better. Weirdly, knowing that his son had a friend six years his senior who cared about Stiles enough to deflect John's shovel speech by saying how much he cared about his son made John more inclined to like him. That Derek had told him as much even though he hadn't thought they were discussing a relationship was also a point in his favor. John wasn't even going to think of it that way, he was just going to stare down his son.

"And the _reason_ that I thought Derek had murdered his sister and the movie store clerk and those two bums... and am I missing anyone?"

"Bus driver," Derek answered.

"Aaand the bus driver," Stiles continued. "Was because... Derek is a werewolf, and I might have been succumbing a bit to that fallacy where the werewolves you know are fine, but it's all those _other_ werewolves who do horrible things like rip women in half in the middle of the woods."

John waited for the punchline. He looked over to Derek, because Derek was a bit more serious and he really didn't see him putting up with that sort of joke, only Derek wasn't laughing either, just sitting, mouth drawn, waiting.

"Seriously?" John asked. "Werewolves? That's what you're going with?"

"Derek, you wanna... do the thing with the teeth?" Stiles asked. "Dad doesn't even have his side arm, so it's not like he's gonna shoot you."

Derek turned to Stiles and gave him a withering glare, before turning back to John and his eyes glowed red and his teeth were now not properly called _teeth_ but instead fangs, and he looked, for all the world, like he could bite John's head off and rip him in half, and John really, really wished he did have his side arm, but then Derek was just sitting back at the table as though nothing had happened and poking his lasagna.

"Werewolves?"

Derek nodded.

"A werewolf killed your sister?" Derek nodded, mouth tight. "Who was... also a werewolf?" Another nod. "Matt was a werewolf?" He tried, because that would almost make sense, he supposed.

"No, Matt was crazy, but he had a... he had a thing called a kanima, which is basically a mindless killing machine that will kill anyone you want dead. Matt thinks 'man, I sure would like that guy dead' and then kanima makes it so." Stiles waved his hands.

"And the kanima is...?"

"Well it _was_ Jackson, but it's not his fault, Jackson was just the... the gun, the lizard murder gun. Matt fired it, him. Matt fired him at them." Stiles sort of was clenching his hands together now, wringing them. "But he didn't know he was a kanima, he just thought we were dicks."

John thought over what he remembered of the last few months, trying to square it with the idea that there was something supernatural afoot, werewolves and kanimas and who knew what else. "That's why you locked him in the prison transport," John said, sighing. "To keep him from killing?"

"Well I wanted to convince him he was a crazy murder lizard, so he would agree to voluntarily lock himself up, or something, but... yes. I locked him up to try to save people." Stiles sighed, again, looking up at John. "I know it's a lot to take in. I've been studying for months and I'm still learning archaic latin so I have a ways to go."

John looked between Stiles and Derek, Stiles looking tentative and hopeful, Derek looking sullen. "I think I preferred it when I thought you two were dating."

Derek was the one who finally broke the long stretch of silence. "I meant what I said about keeping Stiles safe."

"Hey," Stiles protested. "I can take care of myself."

"Your record suggests not."

"Oh who's totally not counting the swimming pool, and the time I almost _cut off your arm_ because you asked? That guy." Stiles pointed at him. "You are in perpetual need of me to save your werewolf ass, and Scott's werewolf ass. _Everyone's_ werewolf ass is better for my presence."

Stiles's last sentence sunk in slowly. "Scott's a werewolf?"

"Oh crap." Stiles glanced around the table before nodding. "Yeah, I mean that's how I got into it. Wait..." Stiles fixed a very firm gaze on Derek. "Did you seriously tell my dad you'd keep me safe? Really?"

Derek scowled. "You need all the help you can get."

The two of them frowned at each other from across the table, jaws both clenched, and John took the moment to take a bite of his own food and try to force the last few minutes to sink into his consciousness. There were werewolves in Beacon Hills, werewolves that his son knew about and was actively helping. It wasn't the sort of thing where you could just put that in a police report, though. 'The Sheriff's Department detained one suspect fitting the description of sometimes furry animal, current man'. That would go over well.

Stiles and Derek were currently long into their own back-and-forth over Stiles and Derek's relative ability to protect themselves, and the bickering was fairly cute, if John did say so himself. After several minutes, the two of them finally seemed to wear themselves down and then they sat across from each other and went back to their dinner.

"So... Derek. How long have you been a werewolf?"

"I was born that way."

Stiles snorted, although John failed to see what was funny about that. Derek glowered at him and Stiles raised his hands in defeat, before Derek returned to his lasagna, forking off another bite.

"My family was... maybe two thirds werewolves."

Was. John remembered how much of Derek's family had died in the fire. He'd been Sheriff back then, too, and even though the fire had been ruled a potential arson and homicide at the time they'd never been able to nail down a motive or a potential perpetrator until recently. Kate Argent. "Was that the reason for the fire?"

"Hey," Stiles turned towards John. "Enough with the Sheriffing."

"Yes," Derek answered, and John watched the way Derek swallowed around a lump of nothing and looked down at his plate. "The Argents are Hunters, they hunt down werewolves and they kill them. Some of them live by a Code, the rest of them... aren't so honest about it."

John turned towards Stiles and mouthed the word 'Code' at him.

"Hunters are only supposed to kill werewolves that hunt other people, a werewolf who's spilled human blood. They don't have so great a record when it comes to practicing that forbearance with Hales." Stiles glanced awkwardly over to where Derek was looking down at his food. "Soooo... not awkward dinner table conversation?"

"I'm buying a house," Derek said, finally. "Something more defensible."

The look Stiles shot John said that they'd talk about why the hell Derek was shopping for _defensible real estate_ at a later date, so he let it slide. "Somewhere in town?"

Derek nodded.

"That'll make you look like less of a serial killer," Stiles offered. "Although statistically I think it doesn't make you any more likely to not be a serial killer."

"I'm not a serial killer," Derek said, like that was an important point to make, and then he looked at John. "I'm not."

"I believe you," John answered.

And, surprisingly, the dinner was _less_ awkward after the werewolf reveal, Stiles even regaled him with some of his exploits, which John really, really hoped just sounded more dangerous because Stiles was playing them up, but if the twist in Derek's mouth was anything to go by Stiles might have been underplaying the danger. Maybe there really wasn't a way to make 'we were trapped together in a pool with Derek paralyzed from the neck down while I kept his head above water and that's why I needed a new phone' sound less dangerous. There were a few stories where John could practically _hear_ the sound of the 'redacted' in Stiles's voice, but there weren't nearly as many times as John would have feared. Stiles seemed to be taking to the dam breaking with gusto.

Two and a half hours later, John sent Derek off with a Tupperware full of lasagna leftovers and a pat on the back before he finally turned to Stiles.

"So there are werewolves _and_ you have a crush on Derek Hale."

"Who said anything about a crush on Derek Hale?" Stiles answered defensive, as he hid behind the dishwasher. "Besides, even if I _did_ have a crush on him, which I don't, he's way out of my league, have you seen him? He seriously seduced one of your Deputies by saying 'hey'. Like actually just 'hi'. I thought I was going to be ill."

John thought that Stiles seriously underestimated his chances on that front, if Derek's reactions to Stiles were anything to go by. The werewolf - which still sounded odd in his head - cared about Stiles, and although John trusted Scott, he actually found when it came to Stiles's safety he might have to trust Derek more. "Well... be safe."

"As humanly possible," Stiles answered.

And that wasn't the end of it. He and Stiles were talking again; they were talking about _everything_ , about werewolves, about Gerard Argent, about the Argents in general, and about an 'alpha pack' that was hopefully going to not cause trouble but John didn't think they were so lucky. John learned more about werewolves and the supernatural than he ever really thought possible, and when there was, two weeks after that very weird dinner, an actual, legitimate, mountain lion attack on a deer, his first call was to Derek who informed him 'nope, mountain lion, not one of mine and no one else is in town'.

He didn't think it was odd when Derek was sneaking into - or out of - Stiles's window at night, although John invited him to use the door, which he did about half the time. There was the one late night call of 'Derek got slashed open by werewolves so I'm spending the night, I'm fine' from Stiles, which left his heart in his throat but ultimately John couldn't put that genie back in the bottle. They even had the Argents, really just Chris and Allison, over for dinner and he and Chris bonded over... kids who knew too much about werewolves and losing their wives. The _full_ story of Mrs. Argent's suicide made it no less horrible, and although Chris wasn't prepared to lay blame on his wife, he was prepared to put some on his father. Stiles had his own opinion on the matter, which Stiles informed him of after the dinner had broken up. John mostly agreed with him, and having started to get to know Derek a bit better, he was inclined to agree that as a parent, while he understood the protective urges, he wasn't going to kidnap Derek and try to kill him if he slept with Stiles.

So John's life slowly came to include werewolves, and running into Derek in the supermarket, practicing his rifle work with Chris, listening to his son spout his latest exploits in _learning warding magic_ , and just generally wondering if having looked through the mirror to the other side wasn't making him a bit crazy or if it was for the best. He and Stiles were closer than ever, and John had to think that Gen would have been proud of him if she was looking down on him.

Coming home a bit early from a long shift, he didn't even blink once at the Camaro parked across the street, or the fact that Derek didn't even bother his half-hearted attempts to park it somewhere around the corner anymore, or the tell-tale open window over the garage that represented Derek's usual ingress into the Stilinski house. Derek was probably over for research, or just generally harassing his son under the guise of not actually being sexually interested in him (which John was too old to buy for a second - he'd seen them bicker, they bickered like married people).

For a minute or so, he stood in the kitchen, pondering the allure of reheated chili versus an omelet, and he eventually decided he might as well ask the boys; Stiles was a teenager, and although he was fairly certain Derek had stopped growing, running around at night and howling at the moon - or whatever it was Derek did with his pack when the Sheriff wasn't around - took up a lot of energy as well, so he climbed the stairs to make the offer of reheating more than just his share. The light was on, shining underneath the door, so he gave his usual knock, and then pushed his way in a second later.

The sight that greeted him was... well. A slightly humorous response managed to be what first came to his mind: 'and that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, was the most perfect tableau of statutory rape I have ever seen'. The scene contained: one son, apparently naked, currently occupying his bed, asleep, back scratched up enough that the red marks were still visible from the doorway; one werewolf, currently staring at the Beacon County Sheriff like a deer caught in the headlights, also apparently naked, also occupying his son's bed, aforementioned son sprawled on top of him; one night stand, covered in an open box of condoms, two condom wrappers, and a tube of what John was fairly certain contained 'personal lubricant'; and one floor, currently covered in more clothing than his son could shed in a single day, including two pairs of boxers. The rest of the scene was fairly ordinary for his son's room, and frankly not the point.

John considered his options, and a few seconds into considering said options he realized that he had - however tacitly - already pre-approved of the union, and the intervening two months since the 'werewolf revelation' had left him better inclined towards Derek than he had been at the outset, so when Derek began to move, in what John could only assume was a prelude to a particularly awkward walk of shame, John just raised his hand, made a 'don't bother to get up' gesture, which led to Derek clinging more tightly to Stiles's back and Stiles nuzzling into Derek's chest further. John then pointedly patted his sidearm.

Derek nodded, looking fairly young and actually intimidated himself. John then backed out of the room, turned off the lights, and tried to ignore the _literal_ beady red eyes of his son's boyfriend as he closed the door behind him.

John tried not to judge Derek too harshly when his son came downstairs in the morning looking _incredibly_ bashful and Derek had apparently beaten a hasty retreat out of his son's window rather than join them for omelets.

He and Stiles didn't talk about it. It was probably the first thing they hadn't talked about in a while, but he was fairly certain there was no un-embarrassing way to discuss the fact that John now knew that his son was sexually active with a werewolf six years his senior. John hated it, not knowing how to bridge that gap again. Gen would have known what to say to cut through the awkwardness and the blatant ignoring of the point.

It did made Derek a particularly easy target when John next caught him in the grocery store, this time hiding behind a box of Rice-A-Roni which made John wonder exactly how long it would be before Stiles overtook Derek's food preferences and supplanted them with healthy, nutritious food rather than salty crap from a box. Considering John was currently attempting to make his own grab for a just-add-water fried noodle soup crap, it would probably be a long time coming.

"Derek."

"Sheriff?"

"Wednesday, 7pm, bring a decent craft beer."

Derek glanced over his shoulder, possibly examining the store's exit and planning his retreat. "One and a half months, we were going to tell you, and I would still do anything to keep him safe."

"You still have to come to dinner." John wasn't letting him get out of it that easily.

Derek winced. "IPA?"

"I'll see you there."

Derek then went one way, John the other, while he tried to decide what would make a good family dinner, exactly how hard to rib the two of them over their foray into a relationship and whether or not he got points for calling it before it happened. John decided he would take all the credit, he was a fantastic father, and he was pretty damn understanding about his son being gay - or at least bi - and in a relationship with a werewolf. Apparently he and Chris had one more thing in common, although knowing Chris his advice on the matter would mostly lean towards neutering techniques. John didn't care, he mostly agreed with Stiles's initial assessment: looks like a serial killer, but his heart's in the right place, and there were far worse choices his son could have made.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Fanart] How long have you been dating my son?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/812240) by [wielka_mi_mecyja](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wielka_mi_mecyja/pseuds/wielka_mi_mecyja)




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